Abstract

This book is excellent value for money. It contains excerpts from twenty-four writers with brief but helpful introductions and notes by Professor Smart. By making the book so long Professor Smart has been able to include fair-sized selections from so wide a range of authors that the teacher who wishes to use it as a text-book has a considerable degree of choice. Of course no selection will please everybody. Perhaps it will seem like carping criticism to say that it is difficult to justify the omission of Nietzsche. Better perhaps to be grateful that the selection strikes a fair balance between Continental and Anglo-Saxon writings. The book will be a boon to any lecturer who is prepared to admit publicly that he cannot reasonably expect students to study all the sources in the original.